Airports in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are deploying sniffer dogs that can sniff out and detect people infected with COVID-19 with near-absolute accuracy.

Accordingly, at airports across the UAE, there are 38 dogs assisting authorities in their fight against the epidemic. Dubai Police have trained these dogs by letting them smell the sweat of people infected with COVID-19. The best dogs can sniff out and detect the scent of infected people in just a few seconds.

Police said that these dogs are currently mainly working at airports but are ready to be present anywhere required.

The training of sniffer dogs to participate in the fight against COVID-19 was deployed after the results of a study published in June 2020 in the journal Communications Biology showed that dogs can detect COVID-19 with a success rate of 98.2%. To reach the above conclusion, the researchers evaluated the dogs' ability to sniff after sniffing sweat samples and PCR tests of 3,290 people.

Currently, some other countries in the world such as Finland, the US and France are also training and testing the use of sniffer dogs to detect people with COVID-19./.

Dogs can also sniff out explosives

The dogs are selected and trained from a young age to get used to the smell of explosives, and to treat the job as a game with rewards.

One morning in 1972, the headquarters of Trans World Airlines (TWA) in New York City received a bomb threat. The anonymous caller demanded $2 million, stuffed in a travel bag in a locker at JFK airport, or four TWA planes would explode.

Unsure which planes were at risk, the airline began grounding all flights to search for bombs. Flight 7, from New York to Los Angeles, had been in the air for 15 minutes when the pilot received the message. The captain turned the plane back to New York and quickly removed the 45 passengers and 7 crew members.

At the end of the runway, the plane stopped to search for bombs. New York City police led Brandy, a German shepherd, to run over. In the cockpit, Brandy sniffed a black briefcase and sat down next to it. The briefcase was marked “Crew,” and usually contained the pilot’s manual. But this time, the police found enough C-4 explosive inside to destroy the plane. A New York City Police Department detective removed the bomb from the plane and defused it just five minutes before it was set to detonate.

No other flights had bombs. The crisis was averted.

The turning point in this story was Brandy the heroic dog. At the time, no airports and very few police forces had bomb-sniffing dogs. Brandy’s exploits led President Richard Nixon to grant the Federal Aviation Administration its own bomb-sniffing dog unit in 1972.